Someone Poured Glue in my Computer - it seems
 

After about an hour or so of browsing, or up to two hours of just being turned on my computer slows down to an unacceptable speed, all programs become very slow and only a re-boot cures the problem.

It is a fairly new Dell, Pent.IV 2.0gigs, 256RAM, 80gigsHHD, 'phone line uplink and satellite dish downlink, WinXP Pro.ZoneAlarm 3Pro, Norton AV2002.

Does anyone have any idea why this should be please?

Also virtually impossible to send an email with an attachment, only basic text emails but then not to mutiple adressees, one or two OK. Have managed to send the odd attachment as the very first thing done after a re-boot, after that, no joy.
That is using Outlook2002 and this problem only started after I changed to a satellite DOWNlink, (still 'phone uplink).
Have tried all the help lines, Dell, MS and Telstra but they don't really have a clue.

Strangely the laptop, not configured for the satellite, does up and down over the same line, everything no problem!:( :( :( :confused: :confused:

I know nothing about Sat downlink etc, but have you checked that some program or other isn't still running, and then crashes. I get that, and it will easily take up all my CPU power. Try Crtl Alt Del and see if anything is there that shouldn't be there.

Sorry if you know it isn't this.

Might sound a bit odd but do you delete your deleted mail and the stuff you sent as well? If not I suggest you try it.

On some setups this will really get the performance back up to snuff. All hail the coders of Redmond!!

Rob

Thanks Guys, I'll try anything to improve it!!!

Go and get a copy of TASKINFO (see below). It shows all your running tasks and the %CPU use of each and resources and other stuff you really don't need to worry about.

I have had exactly your problem recently and it was a bad linkup on the ActiveSync to my PDA. The PDA was removed from its' cradle but the ActiveSync was still hogging 96% of CPU trying to do whatever. Needless to say things were not fast ....

Larsens TaskInfo


Now I know this will help ..... for a change - lol

MG

Many thanks, doing it now!

might sound strange but one of the biggest things to slow a processor down is heat. Have u got sufficient cooling fan and ventilation around ur computer. Sometimes this could take time to occur and you said that it only occurs after a period of time..Try it and let me know.

Looking at that one WTR, (and thanks), but I think it is fairly well ventilated, will move things around a bit!

Cheers, BE.

WheresTheRunway
 

Well, moved things around and ensured good ventilation but to no avail.

Once it has become well and truly glued up a re-boot seems to fix it and it all goes back to normal speed!

Puzzled!:(

Sounds as if it could be a memory leak gradually using up space.
Have you checked for the latest (and correct) versions of drivers?
Can you monitor the space used in the swapfile?

Glued Computer
 

Don't know if you've fixed this yet, but i thought i would add my two-penneth, just in case

If you've checked and there are no processes which seem to be hogging your system think again about heat...Intel chips have a heat sensor in them which slows the chip down if it gets too hot so as to prevent damage to themselves. To the end-user this is preceived as a dog-slow machine. A good way of testing this is to play a game (such as a flight-sim, or something which works your PC really hard) if the game slows down really early on then you probably have a heat problem, most likely a chip fan which isn't spinning. If you can play the game for 10-20 minutes without a hitch then your problem most likely isn't heat related 'cos the chip would be up to full-stress and overheating well before then.

Another reason could be your antivirus doing some sort of background scanning. If that's scouring your hard disk then you'll also get pants performance. Check the settings. Is your antivirus software fully updated? some trojans will dominate your system sending data onto the internet after a short while, that can slow both your PC and your net connection down.

Not so sure about the following....but your problems with sending emails *might* be that the packets of networking information might be having trouble getting back to your PC. If your "in" connection isn't also your "out" connection the machine might just sit about waiting for packets confirming that data is reaching its destination for as long as any timeouts last (possibly indefinitely). If the data coming back has to come via another network, it might just not do it in time. This would be especially true if each connection has a sperate IP address - the packets might not have the rights to get back to the other connection.

Hope that may be of some help.

Many thanks to everybody for their input, I'm still working my way through the suggestions and if I discover something worthwhile I'll be back to tell you.

Thanks again.:)